Blue Posts
I guess we finally know why Ghostcrawler is gone from the forums: we can blame the europeans (but not me) and the whiners who don't take the time of reading posts when they come from a blue tracker. There, that's why the daily classes update are gone, but now we have super fast updates to patches hotfixes!

Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment

Why Ghostcrawler stopped posting on official forums
These forums have always been about players talking to players. We don't want to foster the expectation that it's going to get a blue response if someone tries hard enough (lol I'm replying to a thread calling for a blue). While GC added a lot to these forums (and I say 'these forums' because he only posted in the North America forums) we think we can reach more players, particularly those in other regions, more directly through the blogs, or concerted Q&A's. Blogs also tend to be a better medium for getting the message out there loud and clear, but does have downsides that it removes the conversation that we know is appreciated quite a bit.

While forum posts do lend themselves to that conversational approach, they actually have a lot of downsides to them from our perspective of attempting to get clear and clean information to the players. They aren't very visible is really the first and maybe biggest problem. You can liken forum posts and the information given in them to some of the displeasure surrounding how hotfixes are communicated. I may reply to a thread 20 times and in my #13 reply I say something really important regarding class balance. Who is going to see that? How quickly will that knowledge actually permeate? Will the message be kept clear? Will my clarification in post #17 that explains what people are misunderstanding in #13 be seen by everyone that read #13? People tend not to read past the first blue post in a thread, or skip around and don't read them all, so if you have a correction/addendum to the first post, or just expound upon a thought, it's generally lost on the majority of readers. Blue trackers can help with this, but we're generally not having to explain that "post #13 wasn't the end of the thought and it's being taken out of context" to people who just go to blue trackers. Forum posts also tend to be fairly quickly written by one of us without much in the way of peer-review, and anything written off-the-cuff like a reply to a thread can tend to be more precarious than a more substantive outlet that has an official process of review and correction before its posted (like the blogs). Much to the dismay of many forum goers I'm sure, there's just an infinitely smaller chance we'll say something stupid or mess up in a fully published blog post.

As with anything we do, we never believe we're perfect. There's always room to improve. The blogs may not be the best outlet but we're continually working to improve upon the content we're delivering, and have some pretty exciting stuff planned. We're also working to make the comment system for the blogs a bit more like the forums so conversation can be held there more easily, as well. Of course you've no doubt see we're running a recurring global Ask the Devs Q&A. It's one way where we're hoping to fill that gap of direct developer interaction that the blogs probably just can't hit. We think the Q&A's are going to be extremely popular and fill a big part of what made GC's interactions on here so useful. And we’re going to continue collecting feedback and posting when appropriate, but we'll also be trying to come up with additional ways to facilitate the communication between the developers and players. (Source)

Recycling content in future patches
There definitely is not a hard and fast rule about updating existing content. If we feel revamping existing content makes sense in the current state of the game and lore -- and we think it will be fun -- sure, it's a possibility. You definitely shouldn't expect this every patch though. In the grand scheme of World of Warcraft's history, we've reintroduced very little existing content per patch and expansion. (Source)

And let's get real - we know why you're recycling old content. With the next Starcraft 2 expansion, Diablo 3, and an "unannounced MMO" all in production, I'm guessing the art team has its hands full. Recycling old content is an easy way to create a "new" instance with old art assets.
There isn't a singular Blizzard Entertainment art team. Each franchise has its own art department. We don't just pull resources from one project to give more attention to another in the sense you're suggesting. This is why we have multiple development teams (which include art teams for each) and can work on multiple franchises simultaneously. (Source)

"OMG ALL THE DEVS ARE GONE!"
That wasn't at all the context of the post to which I was responded. That player was suggesting that a singular art team directs their attention away from WoW to work on art for our other games. That's not true.

Now, if an individual person does move onto a new project, their position is filled. Therefore, the resources are still there (which is why I said "in the sense you're suggesting"). This is how career advancement works at any company. How else do you account for a company's growth? You bring in new talent (or move them up from within the company) and train them under the current folks so they can eventually fill the vacancy.

This talk about losing WoW developers, or that WoW is left to a "B team" is getting tiresome. There is no finite pool of talent and we have every intention of making sure WoW development remains very strong.

All of this is practically besides the point anyway. All you've been told is some talented people who helped build WoW into what it is today have moved over to another project to help bring it to fruition. You don't know who those people are, what positions they held on the WoW team, or how many of them have moved onto other projects. Most of them, in fact, are programmers working to develop the systems and tech for a new project. And the programmers WoW has now are amazing. They've taken the original systems and improved upon them many times over.

Just as an example, think back to how slowly UI improvements would be implemented in vanilla and TBC. Now there are scores of great UI improvements nearly every patch. That team is incredible and very experienced. Just the same, the class design team has hardly changed in years, save for a couple of additions (read: not subtractions).

Every department at Blizzard has expanded immensely over the years to accommodate the growing playerbase, as well as our ambitions for the future of the company. You can look at our job opportunities page just to get an example for the talent search we have constantly going on.

Bringing in new talent and growing the company from within is far from a bad thing. It's a great thing and has allowed us to develop several projects simultaneously without short-changing any of them. Anyone who says otherwise is working on an incredible amount of speculation and assumptions.

And even still, the WoW development leadership remains largely unchanged. Every time I stop by to chat with these people -- the same people I've been interacting with for years now -- I'm inspired by their creativity, their talent, and their dedication to making this game mega-awesomesauce. (Source)

Ragnaros Model
The problem is that you have no context or perspective on the model you've seen a static image of.

1) Standing next to the full-sized, animated model will give you a very different perspective when you're looking up from his toenail

2) Knowing that he will only come out of his lava pool to reveal his full figure in a Heroic-only phase of the fight will give you a bit more context

He's not just going to be running around the moment every raid reaches him.

I don’t think a lot of you understand; perspective is a large part of art design. The designers probably designed the model looking upwards from his feet. I bet you Rags’ll look epic when you see him in person
This is sort of what I was getting at with my first point. The perspective is completely different when a player character is standing near him. The proportions were designed with that in mind, which is why the screenshot of the model really doesn't do Ragnaros justice at all. (Source)

I love the comments about Ragnaros' model. I was getting rather fed up with the hate from people towards it when they knew nothing about it's context in the encounter as well as what it actually looked like in-game and fully animated. Now that it's known to only be heroic-mode that you'll see him like that, I really hope the whining about him dies down a lot.

So, question, I noticed GC hasn't posted much if not anything lately... I don't know what to make about the blue response about that either. So is he no longer working for blizzard or something? Or does he now just not actively respond on the forums like he used to? Is GC gone for good?

I gotta admire Blizzard, especially the CM's. The amount of ignorant idiots spewing pure stupidity across the online community is astounding, and the worst are the people with no common sense that see datamined information. I'm surprised Blizzard tolerates the datamining these fansites do with how much shit flies their way when information is revealed out of it's context. They've masochists in true form.

So they're really bringing back an Amani War Bear lookalike? Well, WoW (and Blizzard) is officially dead to me.

why does it mater? Its not going to be the same mount, and will probably not look as cool. Both the tiger(now the panther) and raptor mounts have been changed and are really lame compared to there previous models, and I highly expect the war bear to be the same way. I wouldnt even put it past them to just recolor the black bear mount lol.

The perspective of those legs changes nothing. If he was bigger than Deathwing, or even as big as he is in Molten Core, it wouldn't change anything. Why? Because he has legs, and those legs look like crap.

So, question, I noticed GC hasn't posted much if not anything lately... I don't know what to make about the blue response about that either. So is he no longer working for blizzard or something? Or does he now just not actively respond on the forums like he used to? Is GC gone for good?

No, he just isn't posting on the forums like he did. he is writing regular blog-style posts to describe changes, and probably is still coordinating things, but he's not going to post like he use to. Dealing with the customers on a forum like this grinds you down. I hope he's not too bitter.